Pedalling down a hill is contrary to the physics of bicycle riding and added to that it was a pathetic seven kilometres per hour. I had also been blown off my bike three times by the brutal 120km per hour winds that blew side or head on, leaving me face down in the gravel. Often I resorted to pushing as walking was faster than cycling. Only four days into my trip, feeling battered and beaten by the wind I was ready to quit my plan of cycling across Patagonia.
I had enjoyed a kind introduction to this country. The snow-capped Andean Cordilleras sheltered by lush beechwood valleys, cool turquoise valleys where guanacos grazed; this was the paradise I imagined. However, as rapidly as an armadillo crossing the road vanished into the scrub, so too the mountains suddenly slipped into the past and the bleak plains opened up. My travel companion Steve and I stopped for a snack lunch break, somehow sensing that our joyous start was to become a kind of living hell. How could I even have thought I would get away with not being blasted into a snivelling, defeated lump on a bicycle?
The roaring forties I had so often read about greeted us with gusto. Born in the Pacific, these winds raced northwest across the plateau of Patagonia relentlessly thrashing at anything (mostly myself and Steve) that should come in their way. My average speed was reduced from 22km to 5km per hour. Huddling in a causeway or scrabbling under a bush was our only escape from this assault.
We were heading towards San Sebastian, the border crossing with Chile. Cycling in Tierra del Fuego tested stamina and patience but most of all, mental strength. The wind thrashed, teased, taunted and terrorised 24 hours a day. I tried to apply some of my basic understanding of geography, believing that once the sun had set the wind would drop, but it never did. I would wake up with it, go to sleep with it.
Struggling past the “route 3 Tierra del Fuego” road sign as it quivered and pinged in the wind, I stopped to take a photo and felt cheated that the strength of the wind would not be photographed.
A campervan zoomed past and stopped. Jorge Caldere jumped out, smiling. I saw this as perhaps my only chance to bail out. After two weeks of the wind-blasted plains of Tierra del Fuego, I was happy to see the last of them.
I like to think of a struggle or challenge as being worth the effort. Somehow those two weeks of torment, frustration and madness only helped to heighten the appreciation of the world-renowned Torres del Paine National Park close to Puerto Natales. Granite towers stab the sky and pink, fortress-like cliffs rise unexpectedly out of the vast Patagonian step. Soaking up views of massive glaciers and stunning swooping buttresses, I remembered that clichl, “no pain, no gain”. How true. Extreme experiences only amplified the highlights.
Bolivia — Salt Lake, no city
This ancient sea, a landscape highlight of my trip, was pushed up to the top of the Andean plateau to a height of almost 4000m over the millennia, where it dried into a dazzling white expanse of crisp, hexagonally crystallised salt. It is a landscape where sky meets earth, blue against white, fringed by floating volcanoes a few hundred kilometres away.
Navigating by compass or by a pimple-like volcano on the horizon, my travel companion Yuri and I relished the freedom of not being confined to roads, and the fact that we felt as if we were out at sea, free to sail off in any shimmering direction we liked.
The salt spans 12000 square kilometres of emptiness which is heightened by the intensity of the sun — the silence broken only by the satisfying crunch of salt beneath my tyres while beauty and harshness filled my sense and evoked feelings of awe. I was surprised to pass a few impala-like vicunas, a cousin of the llama, galloping across the pan 30 or 40km from the nearest source of water or food.
There was no escape from the salt or sun, not one speck of shade; a serious bout of sunburn was a distinct possibility, even in a place where the night-time temperature can drop to minus 202C. I was not taking any chances and had covered up well in my long fleece, pants, sunglasses, hat and blockout.
Jeep tours appeared as dots on the mirage horizon, like ants skimming across a pool of water. Perception of distance was distorted: an island that seemed five kilometres away, could in fact be 50km off.
We passed the Salt Hotel that somehow didn’t quite make the same grade as its more affluent cousin, the Ice Hotel in Sweden. Everything was carved out of salt: the tables, chairs, wells and beds. That night was ours; we secured our tent with our bikes because the salt was too hard to set the pegs. Fortunately, the temperature did not drop below 5lC that night. In mid-winter, minus 20nC is not uncommon. Scraping up some of the freshest salt I have ever consumed to add to my pasta sauce, I marvelled at this surreal setting so far away from everywhere in a forgotten corner of south-west Bolivia.
The following morning we arrived at Isla Pescado, or Fish Island, a piece of land in the salt pan which has only three permanent inhabitants who help to run the small tourist lunch stops, and a dog called Kapitan. After almost two days out at sea, which was how it felt, we were beginning to feel desperate for land. It was the dazzling brightness and loss of sense of distance that began to wear us out and we left Salar via some lakeside pueblitos (little villages) and battled through the salt-mush to terra firma.
Following the base of the volcano along makeshift roads of sandy volcanic tuff, prettily cropped with quinoa, the pink high-altitude grain that is cultivated on the altiplano, we hobbled into Salinas village to rest, remove the salt from our bikes and have our first showers in five days. We were heading towards the capital city of La Paz.
Favourite cycling routes in South America: Carretera Austral (Chilean and Argentinean Patagonia), Jujuy in Northern Argentina, Salar Uyuni in Bolivia, Central Cordillera in Peru.
Least favourite: Pan American Highway in Chile, Tierra del Fuego
Best day: Salar Uyuni
Worst day: Many in Tierra del Fuego
Longest time without a wash: 8 days!
Biggest headache: 120km/h head winds in Tierra del Fuego
Punctures: 20 or more
Illness: One day out of 353
Bicycle: Marin Bear Valley, cromoly frame, rigid forks
Useful website: www.geocities.com/TheTropics/Island/6810/
Bridget’s book Blonde on a Bike in South America (Print Matters) is available at all major bookstores or email: blondeonbike@yahoo.com
Comments